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The Best Ad Critic In The World™ (™ pending), but I'm done as a reviewer, at least full-time. I'm also a damn good copywriter with 20+ years experience in NYC. Hire me for your in-house creative department, and I will help you make better, more interesting, and more effective ads/branded content. Samples/resume available upon request. Salary request is very reasonable.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Monkee Davy Jones' career has sunk to Davy Jones Locker level.

(click ads for closer look)"Then I Saw Their Trades...Now I'm A Believer"Yes, DJ also shot a couple of videos for Gorilla Trades, singing and a-strumming and absolutely abusing Monkees tunes. I'm sure your three original bandmates are fucking thrilled that you're parodying their work to help sell stock trades.At daveyjones.net, DJ is also still lobbying for The Monkees to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I would think that this whore of an endorsement deal would forever put the kibosh on that. It's one thing for your songs to be used to sell products. It's quite another to get in front of a camera and make a complete Gorilla's ass out of yourself—do you know how many fellow Baby Boomers are going to have panic/puke attacks once they witness this, Davy? I hope you at least made a boatload of cash.(update: gigglesugar has a clip of Davy Jones when he was on The Brady Bunch. He was such a cutie pie...(sigh)...now I feel guilty...)(ads scanned from today's Investor's Business Daily)previously in music & advertising:1. India.Arie: pop crap or good shit? Discuss.2. Meet the latest 1-800-OK-CABLE shills.3. Sanjaya Malakar's ad dopplegänger.4. Lenny Kravitz. ABSOLUT KRAP.5. Taylor Hicks for Ford: a review.6. 50's packin'. Nutrients.

12 Comments:

The statute of limitations is up on any Monkees songs. And if selling out keeps you out of the R&R HOF, then that would eliminate most of the inductees. BTW, Neil Diamond wrote the song - so wouldn't he be the one signing off on this?

I can only comment on the print ad, I haven't seen any videos... but based on the print ads alone, I don't think this is too bad. I can't speak for his other former bandmates, but maybe I'll remember to ask next time I can catch Peter Tork's band (Shoe Suede Blues) live - he's very approachable at those gigs.

The Monkees were a made-for-TV band and the guys were hired as actors. All could sing, and most of them could play instruments (for the record, Davy DOES play guitar these days, I've seen and heard him live), and at least two of them were already writing songs at that stage, so that was a both a blessing (to themselves) and a curse (to the producers). Why, because eventually they wanted to perform their own original material, and not simply sing (I said sing - not play the instruments for) the music handpicked in the early days by Don Kirshner.

As Mickey Dolenz says often, it was a TV show about a band and they BECAME a band - sort of like if Leonard Nimoy actually became a Vulcan. (Goofy analogy, but it always makes me chuckle.) See, they know the deal. It was just supposed to be a TV show about a band, and by the miracle of teenybopper devotion and some carefully chosen material, it turned into a phenomenon. (Am I a fan? Absolutely. Do I take it as seriously as I did years ago? No way. I remember them fondly and try to see them live, together or separately, whenever they're in my area, because it's FUN.)

Bottom line, you've just given the ads more exposure, and I'm sure Gorilla Trades would thank you for that. :-) I know I didn't even realize these ads existed before today!

The Monkees made a couple records that are stunning but more than that, they haven't really done any harm. It's not like one of them was jailed for molesting children.

So to attack Davy or any of them for simply trying to earn a living seems malicious and inappropriate. They tried to do the best they could within the confines they were forced to work with and did what they could to entertain people.

Life is too short to spend so much energy tearing down harmless people, in my opinion.

Many people try to earn a living and unfortunately its because of people like Davy Jones that they have to live in near poverty. He acts like he's poor as a pauper, and yet gets so much money and royalties from things like this!!

They guy's an entertainer for crying out loud! He's making a living! Why should anyone have a problem with this man doing a commercial? What about William Shatner doing Priceline commercials? Noone said he's selling out. Davy is free to do whatever, as well as Shatner or anyone else. Davy does play the guitar also, so what's the beef about him doing so in an ad? Get a grip people - find another outlet for your hostilities.